The seventh and penultimate episode of VisionQuest gave Paul Bettany a rare opportunity: to portray three characters on screen simultaneously. And one of them would even reference the very first Human Torch. But what happened in the penultimate episode released for streaming on Disney+? To recount the behind-the-scenes of the episode and the narrative choices made, both the showrunner Terry Matalas and the star Paul Bettany spoke. Warning: going forward we will refer to what happened in the seventh episode of VisionQuest, so we suggest you continue only after you have finished watching to avoid spoilers.
VisionQuest, Paul Bettany portrays three characters simultaneously, but at first he shouldn’t: the backstory of the first Human Torch (SPOILER)
Paul Bettany plays a hugely important role in VisionQuest: not only does he portray Vision, the protagonist, but also two other characters who have influenced the story of this character and the MCU as a whole. As demonstrated in the seventh episode, Vision shares the same appearance as Dr. Phineas Horton, the scientist who during World War II laid the groundwork for the artificial intelligence known in the MCU, and also of his first creation, Jim, the AI created following the sorrowful loss of his son.
In the comics, Jim Hammond was an android who operated as the first Human Torch, a name that in the MCU is now associated with Johnny Storm, whom we will see in Fantastic Four. In Vision Quest, Jim’s story takes on even more tragic contours: in a desperate attempt to prove emotions, he ends up self-immolating, eroding until he could no longer bear it. Regarding this character and the potential he would represent in the MCU, showrunner Terry Matalas revealed to Entertainment Weekly his wish: “He should become a TV series. When he gets emotional, he overloads. It’s a fantastic metaphor. I have a few crazy ideas on how to tell that story, but yes, it would be wonderful to see him running around during World War II and taking part in the events… I want to see him clash with the Nazis.” Jim was already introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, when Steve Rogers and Bucky attend an android exhibition in New York, wearing the red suit, even before Steve’s transformation into the Super Soldier. “In a sense, the existence of AI was known even before Tony Stark. Anything relating to AI or robots was a topic of discussion from the start,” the showrunner added.
From the start, Matalas knew that Paul Bettany would play Jim, but he hadn’t anticipated that he would also portray his inventor, Dr. Phineas: “We were in London looking over lists of actors. Every time we evaluated someone, they ended up looking like just a casting stunt.” It was then that Paul Bettany offered to play all three: “So that we could truly understand, on a visual level, the handover of corrupted files from operating systems and humans to the robots, and finally from robots to humans.” After approval from the studios, they had to concretely figure out how to realize the scene in which all three appear in the same room.
Paul Bettany revealed that he spent three days shooting that scene, working closely with his stand-in John Macdonald. Each day he shot the same scenes but interpreted a different character, while the stand-in read the lines of the others. “It was a real puzzle. It was like having everyone’s lines in your head in a really awkward way. So it’s hard to be surprised when you know exactly what questions you’ll be asked.”
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